The Politics of Care: Rancière’s Aesthetics and the Critique of the Museum

While the concept of care has predominantly been conceived in terms of ethics and politics in recent literature, the politics of care at the heart of aesthetics has been absent from this turn. Accordingly, we ask: what does Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics reveal about care in the museum context? Our approach to this question is informed by a recognition of the changing role of the museum as a site of social construction, aesthetics, and care, and utilises Rancière’s writing concerning the politics of aesthetics. The article proceeds through an account of the ethics and politics of care and the historical development of the museum as a site of care. It then considers intersecting contemporary critiques of the museum, namely: “postcolonial”, “institutional critique”, “socially engaged art practice”, and “new institutionalism”. From this analysis, the paper turns to critical care practices such as “curatorial care”, as potential examples of Rancièrian dissensus, to argue that the site of the museum has an inherent politics and is continually contested by curatorial and artistic practice.